The Drunk in the Bar
by AmandaFriend
Summary: He's sitting at the bar, trying to numb the pain, but there's really no reset button for all that has happened. The past colors the future and while at that moment the future looks grim, the past makes us who we are. Spoilers for Daredevil in the Mold.


**The Drunk in the Bar**

_I am an optimist and I enjoyed "The Daredevil in the Mold" and I don't think badly of Booth at this point. He's in pain. Granted, some of that pain is of his own making, but his ultimatum to Brennan makes sense given just how much pain he is in. This is my poor attempt to make sense of the Hannah-sodes and project better days ahead for Booth and for Brennan. _

**Disclaimer: I do not own Bones. **

He only wants to prove one thing: he is worthy of love.

He tries not to think of love in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not about love. It's about sweat and heat and water, lots of water. It's about roadside bombs and Taliban and Al Qaeda. It's about staying alert, staying ready, staying alive.

Afghanistan. This new tour of duty takes him into the desert and is meant to toughen him. His aching heart aches less out there where survival requires him to box his feelings for Temperance Brennan and leave them safely stowed in his duffel or find himself splayed over the ground, wounded by lack of concentration because he's been wounded by her lack of love. He is a man out of his element and in his element, a man unused to the clatter of a new language and used to earning the trust of people.

He can earn trust, earn respect, but he does not know if he can earn love.

Afghanistan forces him to give his best even when he's not sure what that is anymore.

In Washington, he'd grown soft. He'd wrapped up his heart and offered it to a woman whose own heart had been hidden away at the age of 15 and somehow he had thought she might dig it out of that secret vault just for him.

So Afghanistan was to harden his heart.

But instead of hardening his heart, he finds a way to keep it open—at least partly— with Hannah.

Nights and afternoons and mornings tangled in Hannah's arms have proven something—he can love and be loved. She reminds him that he is a generous and energetic lover, a man who knows how to please a woman first.

And it has been easy, so easy with Hannah.

With Hannah he is not a man constantly at odds with his cosmic balance sheet. He's not a man who has to talk of love as if it is a foreign language in need of translation. He's not a man who has to find real-world truths to batter down the door of anthropological tropes.

With Hannah, he's just not that man.

No. He takes her under a fig tree because she offers and he's spent almost five years in a constant state of wanting.

And with Hannah, it's not a one-time thing. It's not just meeting her biological needs with the first handy cock although it might start out that way. It's not just scratching an itch although there is a lot of that going on.

She lets him in. He doesn't have to batter down the door or prove himself again and again. There are no arguments and no hesitations. No lines.

Just flesh and heart and connection. Repeat.

She wants him: Sgt. Maj. Seeley Joseph Booth of the U.S. Army on leave from the FBI.

And he loves that about her. He realizes that as they're making their way to a small village where she's hoping to talk to the local warlord and he's hoping to keep her safe and she smiles and looks up at him and he knows that she's put her trust in him completely.

In Seeley she trusts.

Hannah is easy to be with. She's smart _(not genius level, but hell, he understands her)_, beautiful _(not Bones beautiful, maybe, but still beautiful)_, accomplished _(she's won awards he's actually heard of)._

And open. She loves sex. Loves him. Loves them.

It's Afghanistan. He knows it might just be for the time he's stationed there, but he doesn't care. She's light and good and sexy and she wants him.

And he hasn't felt this good about himself in a long, long time.

oOo

Seven months in and he gets the call. Cam needs him.

He knows that he and Hannah are just a war-time romance, but that's fine. He knows that Bones doesn't want him and having Hannah has allowed him to shield his heart. No contact with Bones has actually worked in his favor although it still hurts like hell.

When he sees her that night, something has changed. He's in the green zone. He's in the observation room of the interview room, looking through the window.

He takes her to task a bit for not keeping in touch with people, but she doesn't get why some people might care to know how she's doing. Or want to know that she cares enough about them to call.

And he chalks it up to another reason why he's had to move on.

He tells her about Hannah and he doesn't look at her to gauge her reaction. He doesn't look at one woman because if he focuses on the other, the pain in not having the first woman will dissolve in the second. The image on his phone reminds him that he can have a life outside Temperance Brennan and he wants that. He needs that.

He's found love and he doesn't care who knows.

His happiness seems to bounce off her. Teflon Temperance. No emotions touch her.

He knows it's a bit rough to think such things because he knows that she does feel some things quite deeply, but she didn't care enough about him to want him, or to contact him. She wanted a partnership and he'll give that to her. Only that.

He focuses on the case and he refuses to focus on her. To focus on her is to go down the rabbit hole again and he will not go there. It hurt too much. It stung too deeply. He redraws a line between the Hoover and the Jeffersonian just as he's drawn a line between them. No more unnecessary trips to the lab. No more late nights at either of their apartments.

Hannah loves him. He loves her. They haven't made any real plans to get together, but she is a buffer between Bones and himself. He can put some space between them because of Hannah.

Hannah is hope. She's the Great Wall of China. She's long distance and possibilities. She's hot sex under a hot sun or hot sex to take the chill off the night.

She's love. And he feels worthy of love with her. He feels wanted.

That feeling multiples when he talks to her. And it multiples tenfold when Hannah surprises him and shows up in DC and moves in.

That part is easy.

It's easy to put up a buffer against what he feels for his partner. That's all she is.

That's all she ever wanted from him.

So he keeps score. Awkward insights. Inappropriate questions. Blunt observations. Lack of subtlety. Strange, squinty behavior. Uncomfortable conversational topics.

All Bones. All reasons why it would never work between them.

A leopard cannot change his spots. An elephant always packs a trunk. A giraffe cannot help but live in the sky with the treetops.

Bones can't change. She doesn't know how.

oOo

Sweets means well. Probably. But his relationship with Dr. Brennan is none of his goddamned business. That's in the past. Hannah is the future.

He is not a man to dwell on the past. Few people know his past. He might be the sum total of that past, but he refuses to revisit that territory. Not with Hannah. Hannah loves the white knight, the shiny armor Booth. She doesn't need to know about how he got that way.

There are hints of his father in his refusals to talk about his relationship with Bones.

But he is a man who sets boundaries and refuses to cross those. He drinks, but he refuses to become a drunk like his father. He gets angry, but it is a controlled anger. He takes risks, but he will not gamble, not anymore.

He loves Hannah and he refuses to love Bones.

He's done with that.

Sweets can ask all he wants. He can.

It doesn't mean he gets an answer.

oOo

She might be a genius, her mind might work at warp speed, but when it comes to human emotions she's woefully slow.

He follows her to Woodland, watches as she kneels in the middle of the street and he knows immediately that that's trouble.

She might be a genius, but she sometimes has no common sense.

When he sweeps her up from the road and deposits her on the side, she provides a scenario that encompasses the full story of Lauren Eames last few hours. In it she weaves in motivation and loss, a greater understanding of the surgeon than he ever thought possible of her.

She practically solves the case entirely on her own, the intuitive leaps particularly breathtaking coming from her.

Except that's what is so frightening.

He seriously wonders if this is another case like the Gravedigger trial where she can't sort emotions from evidence and needs time and space to find her equilibrium again.

There's a fine line between genius and madness.

Just look at Zach.

She's toweled off a bit before climbing into the SUV and he suggests she take some time off and she tells him that the universe spoke to her.

She wants no regrets.

And this is another of those awkward Bones' moments of which he's been keeping score. But how do you score this?

How the hell do you score this? _This_?

They've never really talked about that night outside the Hoover. This is a kick in the gut. Or is it his heart?

He's drawn a goddamned line because that's what he's had to do in order to survive and by God and all that is holy he has moved on because to stay in one place hurt too fucking much.

He's with Hannah. He loves her. He's moved on.

He might have once cared, but he won't go down that rabbit hole again and he won't look.

He won't.

He is a man who sets boundaries and refuses to cross them. He drinks, but he refuses to become a drunk like his father. He gets angry, but it is a controlled anger. He takes risks, but he will not gamble carelessly.

He loves Hannah and he refuses to love Bones.

He's done with that.

oOo

The conversation lingers.

It wakes him in the middle of the night when his body reminds him he's got to get up to pee because he's no longer a young man. It greets him in the mornings when Hannah is gone and his only companion is his thoughts. It niggles at his resolve to maintain that line.

Sometimes secrets can't be secret anymore.

The conversation in the SUV stalks his thoughts and he feels the guilt in the shadows of his conscience when he's with Hannah. She's asked him about his relationship with Bones before. She's commented on their closeness, how well they know each other.

And he knows this one new truth about his partner and he can't quite shake it. It's the ache in his chest, the flashback in his brain, the twinge in his resolve.

Really, he wants someone to tell him that he doesn't really have to say anything to Hannah about this because, well, wouldn't that reveal the lie in his earlier truths? Or the truths in his lies?

He wonders what Bones might say to Hannah. Bones is honestly blunt or, is it, bluntly honest?

Sometimes secrets can't be secret anymore.

He wants Sweets to talk him out of it. He wants Sweets to give him some hope he can hide behind.

But the man is running in place and that makes two of them. He corners Sweets at the gym but the man wants to talk about him still having feelings for Bones and by God and all the saints he is not going down that road again because all it leads to is a sharp drop off and a long, slow fall into oblivion and he's not going down that way again. No.

So he tells Hannah.

He convinces himself that Bones won't say anything to fill in the gaps on his partial truths to Hannah. She's not that kind of woman. She's just different. Awkward insights. Inappropriate questions. Blunt observations. Lack of subtlety.

But she's not _that_ kind of woman.

He figures Hannah will avoid Bones and Bones won't catch on and that will be that. Never mind that the forensic anthropologist has somehow dug up something that he's been trying to bury deep. Never mind.

Zebras can't change their stripes. Monkeys see and monkeys do. Snakes slither, hiss and strike but can't hitch hike without thumbs.

He tells Hannah.

Bones can't change. She doesn't know how.

But she surprises. She confronts Hannah's avoidance and Hannah confronts right back. He gets the story later, told with remarkable accuracy by a world-class journalist.

And all is right in his world.

All is bright.

Yet the conversation in the SUV lingers.

It wakes him in the middle of the night when a car horn shatters the peace. It greets him in the mornings when he stares into the mirror. It niggles at his resolve to keep his distance.

Sometimes secrets can't be secret anymore.

oOo

The absurdity of it all just hits her and she laughs.

Distance and awkwardness and uncertainty have accompanied them to each crime scene and through each case but something shifts. Something shifts.

"You should have waited for me."

He puts no great significance in those words except. . . except he does. With those words he knows the truth of her. She'll follow him into hell, into the twisted terrain of Jacob Brodsky's mind without hesitation.

"You should have waited for me."

Bones surprises. He's torn down the banner, "What's ours is ours", and given that to Hannah and yet, she does not hesitate. She remains true to him, to them. Bones remains his partner.

Bones seems to have compartmentalized her disappointment and placed it deep in that vault which holds the pain of her parent's abandonment and years in foster care and the rejection of her peers and lovers and refuses to color their relationship with her pain.

Something has shifted.

He knows Bones can't change; she doesn't know how.

So when she laughs at the absurdity of one man having three wives and seeking love with a fourth woman, it's just odd enough to break the ice that has formed between them. It makes no sense and it's a bit forced—nothing at all like lying under Western skies and imagining anthropologists as aliens—but it feels good to laugh with her. It's not quite Thai food late at night or skating through his concussion or a stroll past the Lincoln Memorial. It's not belting out a song or sculpting clay or the closeness of a guy hug, but it feels right somehow.

He's got a ready answer for her when she asks if the husband could love all his wives equally. There's always someone you'll love the most, he tells her.

He's slipped into his role of teaching her about the whys and wherefores of the world. Of love.

But there's something in her manner, something in the rightness of it all, something that makes him wonder who is really teaching whom.

_There's only one person that you love the most. _

He doesn't doubt the words, only who they might describe.

"And what if you let that person get away?" she asks.

What if?

_That person's not going anywhere._

And what does that mean?

oOo

The heart wants what the heart wants.

His heart wants home and family and love.

_I gotta find someone who's gonna love me 30 years, or 40, or 50._

Sweets only reminds him of what his heart wants, what it's wanted for so long.

He's a man who has always tried to color within the lines that fate has provided. He's a man of faith who believes that all good things come to those who wait.

But sometimes he tempts fate, buries faith.

oOo

_He had a grip on my plums, man. It has an effect on your judgment. _

Words swirl and eddy around him and they seep into him just as the alcohol hijacks reason and numbs only some of the pain.

_You've never been married and that's sad. . . . I'm not the marrying kind. . . . You just weren't listening._

His desire to not be his father has a grip on him. He's Seeley Joseph Booth. He's a good man with a good job, a good father with a good reputation. He's one of the good ones. He is good to women. He's a good lover. He's a good provider. He's good.

Why is that so bad?

_. . . Had a grip on my plums. . . that's sad. . . not the marrying kind. . . you just weren't listening. . . ._

Sliding onto the stool next to him, her first words are blunt.

_Are you drunk?_

He's at another Temperance Tournament where he can keep score of the awkward insights, inappropriate questions, blunt observations.

_I am not a drunk. I am not my father. I am a good man with a good job, a good father with a good reputation. I am not a drunk. I am not my father. _

She slides onto the stool next to him and he's outside the Hoover and on a bridge and in a bathroom waiting for the results of a pregnancy test. She slides in next to him and nothing has changed except the location.

_Hannah called me. _

One disaster is like the next. Each loss hardens your heart and thousands of miles will never take you completely away from yourself.

There's no reset button. We can't go back. We can't go forward.

Love breaks you down, pulls you apart and sees what you're made of. Flesh and bone. Sinew and muscle. Heart and soul. Easy on the eyes. A good man. One of the good ones in an age when a good man is hard to find.

_But just not good enough. Not nearly good enough. _

Sex is not free. It can lead to venereal disease, pregnancy, love. Break the laws of physics and break one's heart. Find a way to heal the unhealable under the sun in a foreign sky with a woman who rewards bravery with a kind of breathlessness. Come with a thousand lights that burst in your head and set you free from a life of Temperance and think this, this is the one. This is special. This will be the one I can move on to. This. Only this.

_I'm done. I'm over it. I didn't want to disappoint anyone. I don't want to talk about it. _

I don't want to hurt. _(I want someone to love me 30, 40 or 50 years.) _I've been shot, stabbed, tortured, but no wound goes as deep as this.

_What happens now? What happens next?_

Are you keeping score? How do you keep score on love? How do you take the measure of a heart? How do you take the measure of a man that no one wants?

That no one loves enough to stay.

Three times the charm. Three times is insanity. _Insanity is doing something over and over and over again expecting a different outcome._

_Go ahead, take a shot. You're the gambler. You have to break the stalemate. When you kiss the dam will break. Take a shot._

It's a sniper school for love: Love breaks you down, pulls you apart and sees what you're made of. Flesh and bone. Heart and soul. A good man. _(I am not my father.)_ Easy on the eyes. _(No one wants what I'm offering.)_ A good man. (_I gotta find someone who's gonna love me 30 years, or 40, or 50._) One of the good ones in an age when a good man is hard to find. _(With Hannah, was it a hard man is good to find?)_

But just not good enough. Not nearly good enough.

_No one loves enough to stay. _

_No one loves enough. . . ._

_No one loves. . . ._

_(I don't want regrets. I don't want. I don't.)_

Here's the reset button. Here's what happens next. Here's the choices: _stay-here-but-stay-the-hell-away-from-me or go. _

_Go back to your life. Go back to Afghanistan. Go back to Maluku, the lab, to limbo._

Love is an idiot.

For years he's tried to teach her about love. He's tried to allow her to see the transforming power of love. _But here's the truth of all truths:_ What the hell does he know about love?

_Love had a grip on my plums, man. It has an effect on your judgment. _

Love is an idiot. She's known all along. Wasn't he listening? (_You just weren't listening.) _Love is an idiot.

And he's it's greatest fool.


End file.
